u/SlyErudito

In the chaos of the last few days, many theories have already emerged and there has been a lot of discussion regarding God of War Laufey. Following the trailer, the community immediately sprang into action, leading to a literal explosion of discussions on all sorts of topics.

One of the main patterns I found in these discussions is the connections being made between God of War and the Arthurian cycle, and it immediately occurred to me to summarize them.

I think the origin of all these connections regarding the Arthurian cycle stems from a leak that came out two months ago, which I'll link here (if you don't like spoilers from leaks, DO NOT click on the link, there is more than what was seen in the trailer):

https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1sld5vp/mp1st_the_new_god_of_war_spinoff_will_feature/

This leak refers to some things we find in the God of War Laufey trailer (including Phranque), and also other things we didn't see in the trailer, including (SPOILER ALERT) >!"Merlin is in the game as a talking sword"!<.

I think this last part of the leak is what most encouraged the community to theorize about the Arthurian cycle, and let's just say that some pieces of the puzzle are slowly coming together:

• Faye could be Morgan Le Fay and/or The Lady of the Lake
• The sword could be Excalibur (>!And could Merlin be trapped inside it?!<)
• >!Or Phranque could even be Merlin!<>! (After all, he is the one who suggests to Faye how to best use magic in the Everywhen, acting somewhat as a mentor to her)!<

We also have other small details:

• The game's main artwork seems to be inspired by the work of Michael Whelan (an artist who has created various artworks related to the medieval fantasy genre)
• It's not the first time that God of War lore has been intertwined with literature (Remember that Mimir is Puck from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream)
• The central focus of the Everywhen is magic (the place from which magic flows out and returns)

The point is that if we believe in this direct connection between God of War Laufey and the Arthurian cycle, it could be that the sword Faye wields during the trailer isn't actually Excalibur.

My doubt stems mainly from the symbols found on the sword: https://i.gyazo.com/a0004b077b7dbb61af6c042b680cc15a.png

In the image, we can notice a series of 8 symbols (characters) written in an alphabet that basically doesn't exist (some characters might come from existing alphabets, but they don't seem to be connected to each other in the slightest). These symbols have only one characteristic: one of the symbols repeats exactly once, bringing the total count of distinct symbols present on the sword to 7. We can look at this in two ways:

• There is an 8-character word written on the sword, with the second character being the same as the fourth
• There is an 8-character word written on the sword, with the fifth character being the same as the seventh

If those symbols do indeed represent the sword's name and we were to connect it to a sword from the Arthurian cycle, that name could only be one: Galatine, one of the legendary weapons of the Arthurian legend, the mythical sword of Sir Gawain, granted to Gawain himself by the Lady of the Lake.
Galatine is often confused with Excalibur; in truth, in the Arthurian cycle, it is often referred to as the TWIN SWORD to Excalibur.

Or maybe I'm just letting my imagination run wild and nothing I said makes sense.